Sometimes writing comes easy, but usually it’s a difficult process for me. I write a draft, edit it, put it away, come back to it, edit some more, rewrite it, and so on. It’s a process that lives in the abstract, and I have dozens of pieces that I’m thinking about at any one time. It takes discipline to bring an idea to completion.
Like any artist, I crave the times when the flow takes over. You feel powerful, in control, and inexhaustible. The writing process can almost feel like it takes on a tangible form—almost as if there are real-world, physical manifestations of the abstract writing process.
That’s what I was going for with this song. “Stringing words on a clothesline,” because they are not ready yet, or “sweeping dust of punctuation,” as if there’s a need to clean up all the residue from the work of writing. There’s a sound to writing, “a chain of eighth notes” that emanates from the keyboard (or a typewriter, if you want to be really romantic about it), or the rhythm of the written phrase read aloud—or both.
Writing is powerful. The best journalists understand that they are literally writing history, in real time. It’s true of all writers, in a way. Take your craft seriously. Keep practicing, keep writing, keep improving. You are not just making progress, you are making history.
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